


Don River, 1965

by gazastripping



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 09:02:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15191387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gazastripping/pseuds/gazastripping
Summary: I had a dream that I happened to remember in awful detail, so I'm dumping it here





	Don River, 1965

**Author's Note:**

> I had a dream that I happened to remember in awful detail, so I'm dumping it here

It was a hot day in the Mojave Desert.

I had no idea where I was, but I knew I was going somewhere. I didn’t know where. It only really mattered that I was on the road.

The one single trail I had left to follow was an abandoned road in the middle of nowhere. This road was a four-wheel tire trail that wasn’t even solid, but you can’t expect any luxury from an old, lonely road. I’ve been walking for about three to four hours now since I woke up, and—would you believe it? Only three cars have passed in this amount of time, and none of them have stopped at the sign of my thumb.

I wasn’t as tired as you would imagine me to be. I’ve been walking like this for almost four years now. You get used to it. I would honestly say that a desert is better than hometown Toronto, where I started walking from.

“Why would you ever leave home?” is a reoccurring question I get asked. A lot of people seem to think home is the best place to be in. I wouldn’t say so. Not once have I wanted to go home. Maybe it was my fault that I never connected with the many homes I’ve lived in. My mother crashed her car and drowned in Don River in 1965. It made my life completely miserable. So shortly after, my dad found a woman I never got along with, which made him an alcoholic and my stepmother a drug addict.

You know, I’m not the good guy or the bad guy in my story, but one day I just couldn’t take it anymore and left my house on the 18thof May, my birthday, and left a note saying “SORRY”. My plan was to hitchhike to and live in California, but I spent this year drowning in suicidal thoughts, LSD trips in a Volkswagen van with a bunch of hippies and police runs for theft. If I got an apartment, the police would be at my door in no time, so I better kept silent and transparent. As of now, my only final destination is my own death.

As I walked the dusty road, I heard a faint motor grumble getting louder. The second I looked over my shoulder, I saw sunrays bounce back from a 1967 Ford Mustang driving towards me. I put my arm in a ninety-degree angle and stuck my thumb in an O.K. gesture, and just hoped for this beauty to pull over. It stopped in the middle of the trail. I guess four is my lucky number—this was the fourth car that came by.

I lapped up the last drops of the water I had left in my bottle, and ran up to the car. Drained in every way there is, I leaned on the edge of the car door as the window rolled down.

“Where ya goin’?” Asked the driver: a strange-looking woman with a cowboy hat and synthetic blonde hair.

“Wherever you are,” I said.

She smirked and reached to open the car door for me.

As she resumed to drive, she tried putting on the radio. It was all jammed up and fuzzy-sounding. I offered help by just stretching out my hand. After tuning and pressing the extractable radio deeper into the salon, I caught on a decent frequency and sat back.

“Good morning, USA! Joe Marley here, it’s 7 AM, May 13th, 1971, and we have the perfect song for you fellas out on the road today! We hereby present “Sweet Hitchhiker” by Credence Clearwater Revival! Jam on!”

I closed my eyes. The music was soothing and the windows of this lady’s Mustang were rolled down. Wind matted up my hair.

“So, what’s the plan?” She suddenly asked.

I just stayed silent.

“So yous a quiet one, aren’t ya?”

I nodded and lazily opened my eyes.

While we drove, I noticed a couple of ripped out papers stuck to her Shelby’s windshield with duct tape. There were several faces of “WANTED” people printed on them. The only one I immediately recognised was Charles Manson. After careful examination of each face, I was hit with the realization that one of all these faces was mine. Long hair, beard, dirty, red bandana around my head.

It hit me she’s a cop. My eyes darted to her worn leather belt that hugged her waist. Behind it, tucked, was a gun.

I panicked. My organs went buck wild. I didn’t know what to do. My mind was going through so much I was sweating—it was hesitation, paranoia and fear of a gun against my head if she recognizes me from a cropped piece of paper on the windshield. What I did know was exactly why my face was on that fucking windshield. It happened about two months ago when me and upstate New York friend Benny tried to rob a bank in Pittsburgh. I still don’t know the name of it but I know that Benny’s dead now. He was shot down by one of those damn pigs. Fuck cops. He sacrificed himself for me. He told me to run. Benny was my best friend. He was my only friend. I have no idea where he lies now. If I did, I would visit him.

The very first idea I had was to open the car door and jump, but that was just outright stupid. The car was going at least ninety miles per hour and we were on the highway now. Another car would hit me before I could recover or stand up.

The second one was to push her off the steering wheel, guide the car off the road and risk it with a crash. Get out and just leg it. But we were crossing a big river and by the time we cross it, I’ll be arrested.

I tried to ask her to just drop me off here. In return, she said: “Sorry, can’t do that. We’re on the highway, bud.”

My only hope was for her to never look at that damn picture; not even glance over it. I was never caught before, and I didn’t want to make history like this. The picture was of me with a reloaded fucking revolver stepping on a bus to San Francisco. The photo was clear enough to see my face.

As sweat oozed from my skin every dear second that passed, I wanted more and more to take a sharp left off the bridge. It asked for every bit of my willpower. Finally, in the whim of emotion and desperation to be the king of my own freedom, I lashed out and grabbed the wheel.

“What the—!“ She yelled in a shock, pulling off her sunglasses and unclipping her belt to reach the gun. Her—beautiful, I noticed for no shit reason—hands struggled to pull it out. Before I knew it, my hands were on the gun, trying to take it from her.

Neither of us paid any attention to the road. The car lost control fairly quickly. It slammed trough the metal rod fence of the bridge and fell down into the river, during when I fatalistically realized it was too late to hit the brakes, jump out—it was just too late to take anything back.

It felt like an eternity until the car reached the water. As it hit the surface, everything went black.

When I opened my eyes, I realized I’m not dead yet, but the sight before me was far more dreadful than dying: I saw the car fill up with water. I tried, but couldn’t, open the door because of water pressure. The woman was knocked out and bleeding heavy from her nose. Terrified, but oddly patient, I waited for the car to fill with water to open the door.

These were the longest few seconds of my life.

The will to survive must’ve been too strong on my psyche. I unfastened my seatbelt and took a big breath, failing to realize my foot was stuck and jammed between scrap from the car’s salon and the floor. It had to be the adrenaline that stripped me of pain. I tried my fucking hardest to get it out, but the foot wouldn’t budge. I was in agony, all of a sudden. In complete agony.

I took a glimpse at the woman as everything began fading. Her brassy hair curled in the water. I reached out, hoping my touch would wake her, but it didn’t. I tried to unfasten her seatbelt, but it wouldn’t move. Feeling my brain slowly give out, I focused my last energy on at least saving her. I blindly pulled out my Swiss knife and cut the seatbelt up. She immediately began to float to the car’s roof.

Dark spots danced in front of my eyes. I had already gotten too much water in my lungs.

I gently took the woman’s head in my hands, put my lips against hers and blew my last breath into her.

Her eyes shot open. For a split second, she looked at me with such sympathy I had never seen in my life. Unable to hold her any longer, I let go, and she floated and awkwardly kicked to reach the surface.

As the car sunk deeper and sense of light disappeared, I quit bothering my foot. It was all jammed up. I had no hope.

The only light that had my attention was the green haze of the barely working radio. It was still playing.

“Bookend’s Theme” by Simon & Garfunkel was still playing.

My eyes slowly fell shut, and all I heard was the sound of bubbles hitting my face.

When the car had reached the river’s bottom, I had already stopped feeling pain. I was no longer suffocated by water or the weight of reality. I opened my eyes, completely capable of breathing, and caught a glimpse of a person sitting in the driver’s seat in the corner of my eye. When I turned to look, it was my mother looking at me.

I wasn’t scared. I was happier than ever, seeing her smile at me again. When she smiled at me, through the muddy green curtain of water, I realized I was no longer alive.

I didn’t mind. I didn’t mind at all. 


End file.
